Comments on Waste Reduction by Drew Martin, Sierra Club of Florida
I have separated my comments into areas that I believe are essential
to reducing our waste by 75 percent.
All bottles and cans must require a deposit return. This is essential to
reducing our waste in Florida. As good stewards of the environment
we need to add incentives that encourage the public to bring in their
recyclables. According to an AP article --
A California a bottle
deposit law caused recycling to reach an all-time high in
California while at the same time the nationwide recycling rates
were falling. Right now bottled water is the single largest growth
area among all beverages sold. To reduce our waste we must recycle
100 percent of plastic water bottles.
Bottled water is often consumed away from home in areas where
there's often no recycling. As a result there is extensive littering
resulting from bottled water. Plastic floats and does not degrade in
the open environment making the effects even more obvious.
Only about 12 percent of "custom" plastic bottles, a category
dominated by water, were recycled in 2003, according to industry
consultant R.W. Beck, Inc. That's 40 million bottles a day that went
into the trash or became litter. The low water bottle recycling rate has
been falling, from 53 percent in 1994 to 19 percent in recent years.
A bottle deposit law is essential in improving recycling rates.
Florida needs to promote industries that make items from recycled
materials while at the same time improving technologies so that plastic
materials may be used over and over again rather than having a one
time use. This is referred to as cradle to cradle. Items such as plastic
bags should be made from recycled bags not from new oil. Right now
the world consumes 10 million barrels of oil a year manufacturing
plastic bags that have a useful life of only twenty minutes, but a life in
a land fill of over 1000 years and in our oceans may remain
permanently part of the environment.
Another product of fossil fuels that Florida should recycle 100 percent
of is Styrofoam.
Styrofoam is also known as expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam used
in plastic #6 (polystyrene) in plastic cups and CD and DVD cases.
Many food
vendors provide Styrofoam containers for take out and it is ubiquitous
everywhere. The state needs to include Styrofoam as an item to be
reduced and or recycled. I recommend that Florida place a fee on
Styrofoam containers thus discouraging its uses. Take out containers
could be made from other materials. Styrofoam is form of litter and
appears to remain in the environment. Florida should work with
manufactures and food vendors to reduce the significant amount of
Styrofoam being used.
Styrofoam is also prevalent in food packaging. Some
corporations such as Publics do take back Styrofoam, but the
question is how much is actually being recycled.
Styrofoam can be recycled and The Alliance of Foam Packaging
Recyclers reported that 56 million pounds of EPS was recycled in
one year. The state needs to work closely with private
businesses to assure drop off sites are available around the state
and to see if our waste facilities could adopt programs for
voluntary recycle Styrofoam.
Because it’s so lightweight, EPS takes up 0.01 percent of the
total municipal solid waste stream by weight, but its volume and
indestructibility is an issue. It takes up space in landfills and
doesn’t biodegrade. Further, it is not good to burn Styrofoam
and I would oppose including this in any waste to energy
program. Biodegradable packing material is an alternative. Some
biodegradable products are plant-based and break down into
inert proteins that naturally degrade after coming in contact with
water and are consumed by soil bacteria. These products could
be composted in home gardens or in composting on a larger
scale.
I recommend that the state adopt a policy to reduce Styrofoam
both in packaging and in the use of disposable containers from
food vendors. Other more environmentally friendly products
should be encouraged. Packaging of products generates a great
deal of waste. The state needs to promote the reduction of
packaging in the sale of all products. Packaging is one of the
greatest forms of waste in land fills and adds weight during
shipping causing increased use of energy.
Another significant area of waste are discarded electronic
devices and accompanying batteries and other materials. The
Environmental Protection Agency has not done enough to curb
the export of discarded electronic products. A 63-page report -commissioned by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman
Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) -- is a scathing critique of the EPA's
failure to control the export of used electronic equipment, which
often is sent to China, India and other countries to be
dismantled under unsafe conditions. U.S. authorities have yet to
develop a national approach for handling the waste, which often
contains toxic metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium.
Amounts are rapidly growing as consumers replace their laptops,
cell phones and televisions. Florida needs to lead the way by
insisting that manufactures and retailers of these products find a
way to capture these products safely at the end of their useful
life.
The state of Florida needs to adopt a policy on the sale and
collection of e-waste. A fee at the time of the sale of items
might improve the collection of e-waste at the end of its useful
life. It appears that currently much of this waste is currently
going directly into land fills. This waste should never be burned
or left to decompose in land fills.
Pharmaceuticals and other compounds also need special handling
to avoid entering the waste stream and escaping into our water
resources. Right now these products when excess are either
being flushed down toilets or tossed into the garbage.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers need to adopt policies to recover
this waste. In particular unused pharmaceuticals could be
returned to the manufacturer for safe disposal or to be
recombined into new products when possible. It is extremely
important the manufacturers of the products take responsibility
for their disposal. Many hospitals and nursing homes currently
dispose of these products down the toilet or into the trash.
Because our water table is so close to the surface and mixes with
the ocean we need to take action deal with the disposal of these
products.
Some of the chemicals found in pharmaceuticals that have been
found in nearby water sources are:
Carbamazepine, an anti-convulsant and mood stabilizer,
Cotinine, a nicotine metabolite, DEET, an insect repellent,
Galaxolide, a synthetic musk, Monensin, a cattle antibiotic and
Naproxen, an anti-inflammatory.
All unused household pesticides should also be accepted back by
manufacturers or retailers and never placed into our waste
system. All manufacturers of products need to provide drop off
points for recovery of these products. All such products need to
be labeled to recommend that they be returned to manufacturer
rather than placed into the waste stream. Further, disposal fees
need to be included in the purchase price of products so that the
cost of disposal is already covered thus providing an incentive to
correctly dispose of the product at the end of its life.
In order to reach a goal of 75 percent waste reduction it is
essential that all counties and cities have mandatory recycling
programs. All business must be required to recycle card board
and paper, in particular. Too many businesses in Florida still do
not recycle their waste leading to excess land fill needs.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to these
recommendations.